Eszter Balint in Jim Jarmusch’s film Stranger Than Paradise, featured in Blank City. Photo courtesy of the Squat Theater Archives, via blankcityfilm.com

Blank City, a documentary about the renegade artists living, playing and collaborating on the Lower East Side in the late ’70s and early ’80s, opens today at the IFC Film Center. The film, made by newcomer Céline Danhier, made the rounds in the top festivals last year and arrives back in NYC with some great reviews.

Danhier combines rare footage from the downtown avant-garde film scene at the time, sometimes called the “No Wave” movement or the “Cinema of Transgression,” with interviews of the artists who are still around today. You’ll recognize Debbie Harry, Jim Jarmusch, Patti Smith, Steve Buscemi, Sara Driver, Lydia Lunch, Amos Poe, John Waters, John Lurie, Eric Mitchell and Susan Seidelman, to name a few. Watch the trailer after the jump.